Monday, February 20

It's been a few days. Time to get back to blogging.

Since I last updated Brithumewatch, Brit Hume got his interview with Dick Cheney. There's a decent commentary of it by David Eddlestein here. One of the things that's interesting about the interview, as Eddlestein notes, is how at the beginning of the interview Cheney describes Harry Whittington as a "good friend" and then seconds later, in response to a question by Hume, refers to him as a mere "acquaintance."

Q: How did you feel when you heard about that?

A: Well, it's a great relief. But I won't be, obviously, totally at ease until he's home. He's going to be in the hospital, apparently, for a few more days, and the problem, obviously, is that there's always the possibility of complications in somebody who is 78-79 years old. But he's a great man, he's in great shape, good friend, and our thoughts and prayers go out to he and his family.

Q: How long have you known him?

A: I first met him in Vail, Colorado, when I worked for Jerry Ford about 30 years ago, and it was the first time I'd ever hunted with him.

Q: Would you describe him as a close friend, friendly acquaintance, what?

A: No, an acquaintance.

Emphasis mine.

Of course, Hume didn't follow up on this or any other discrepancy in the Vice President's account. When Cheney explained that he didn't follow Whittington to the hospital because there wasn't enough room on the ambulance, Hume changed the subject rather than ask why it was Cheney could not have followed in another car.

Q: What did you do then? Did you get up and did you go with him, or did you go to the hospital?

A: No, I had told my physician's assistant to go with him, but the ambulance is crowded and they didn't need another body in there. And so we loaded up and went back to ranch headquarters, basically. By then, it's about 7:00 p.m. at night.

Q: Did you have a sense then of how he was doing?

Hume is a very intelligent questioner, and very quick on his feet. If he failed to ask an obvious question of the V.P. it wasn't a simple oversight. It was simple deference. By and large, during the interview, Hume asked the questions that had to be asked, but didn't probe them any further. He, for instance, accepted Cheney's story that he had drunk "one beer" at lunch, and quickly moved on to other subjects.

Q: Was anybody drinking in this party?

A: No. You don't hunt with people who drink. That's not a good idea. We had ...

Q: So he wasn't, and you weren't?

A: Correct. We'd taken a break at lunch — go down under an old — ancient oak tree there on the place, and have a barbecue. I had a beer at lunch. After lunch we take a break, go back to ranch headquarters. Then we took about an hourlong tour of ranch, with a ranch hand driving the vehicle, looking at game. We didn't go back into the field to hunt quail until about, oh, sometime after 3:00 p.m. The five of us who were in that party were together all afternoon. Nobody was drinking, nobody was under the influence.

Q: Now, what thought did you give, then, to how — you must have known that this was — whether it was a matter of state, or not, was news. What thought did you give that evening to how this news should be transmitted?

Hume didn't ask how much anyone else (including Mr. Whittington) had drunk, nor whether other alcoholic beverages besides beer had been served. In addition, as others have noted, Fox News has not even released the video clip of Cheney admitting that he had a beer for lunch, taking time to excise that portion of the interview from the segments that were broadcast.

I'm not going to say that the interview was scripted (though we know that this Whitehouse, does often script this sort of thing). In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say that it probably wasn't scripted. But, let's face it. It didn't really need to be. After all, this is Fox News, and this is Brit Hume we're talking about. All you really need to know about the legitimacy of this interview is that it came about after the National Review Online suggested that Cheney do an interview with Hume to get the whole Whittington incident behind him:

Cheney himself should make a public appearance on the matter, and the sooner the better. He should get himself with a respected national anchor — perhaps Brit Hume of Fox News — as soon as this evening to express his regret and explain in his own words what happened.

Not surprisingly, other media figures have commented on the distance that Cheney has placed between himself and legitimate news reporters. CNN's Jack Cafferty, for instance, noted that Cheney's "running over there to the Fox network"... "didn't exactly represent a profile in courage."

In response, in Thursday Feb 16th edition of The Grapevine, Hume takes a swipe at Cafferty noting:

And someone named Jack Cafferty said, "It didn't exactly represent a profile in courage for the vice president to wander over there to the F-word network,” calling the interview, "a little bit like Bonnie interviewing Clyde."

Translation: I'm Brit Hume, beyatch! Who are you? As usual, whenever Fox News comes in for criticism, the nework's apoligists fall back on their ratings leads over other networks, as if ratings had anything to do with integrity or professionalism. A look at circulation figures for the National Enquirer over the past few decades should put that notion to rest.